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Mariam Motamedi-Fraser BA (Hons), PhD

Staff details

My work explores 'sense-making' – how different kinds of theoretical, political, methodological, ethical and affective sense is/can be made, and with what implications – at the very edges of disciplines and other domains. The event in science, failure in sociology, are examples. My most recent book, Word: Beyond Language, Beyond Image (2015), investigates the senses that humans make of words when they are abstracted from language, and the senses these words make of them. I identify and discuss such non-linguistic word encounters in, for example, social theory, religions, and in debates about disability, photography, art, and gesture. I have recently developed the core argument of Word in relation to dogs (see 'Dog words; or, how to think without language,' Sociological Review, forthcoming).

Research Interests

My current research is on animals, with a particular focus on the theoretical, methodological and ethical implications of recent developments in the sciences of animal cognition and behaviour for the social sciences, and also for animal/human relations more broadly. I teach a third-year undergraduate option module entitled Thinking Animals, and an MA Module called Animals in Theory and in Practice: Philosophy, Agency, Ethics. I am apprenticed to The Dog Hub in Euston and am doing an AdDip that covers all aspects of canine life (from evolution and genetics through to individual behaviour and social environment).